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The Newry Canal, located in Northern Ireland, was built to link the Tyrone coalfields (via Lough Neagh and the River Bann) to the Irish Sea at Carlingford Lough near Newry. It was the first summit level canal to be built in Ireland or Great Britain, and pre-dated the more famous Bridgewater Canal by nearly thirty years and Sankey Brook by fifteen years. It was authorised by the Commissioners of Inland Navigation for Ireland, and was publicly funded. It was opened in 1742, but there were issues with the lock construction, the width of the summit level and the water supply. Below Newry, a ship canal was opened in 1769, and both Newry and the canal flourished. By 1800, the canal was in a poor condition, and another £57,000 of public money was spent refurbishing it over the following ten years. Closures during the refurbishment resulted in a loss of traffic, which did not fully recover. In 1829, both canals were transferred to a private company, who spent £80,000 on improvements over the next twenty years. The ship canal was enlarged in 1884, to allow ships of 5,000 tons to reach Newry. It reverted to public ownership in 1901, when the Newry Port and Harbour Authority was created. The canal closed in 1936 and most of it was officially abandoned in 1949, with some in 1956. The ship canal closed in 1966 and the Authority was wound up in 1974. Two sections of the redundant canal were bought by local authorities, for two pounds each, and the middle section was given to another two local authorities. The ship canal has been reopened for use by pleasure craft, and there have been attempts to reopen the Newry Canal, which have not yet been successful. The towpath has become part of a long distance footpath and also part of the National Cycle Network. Some restoration has taken place, and the canal has become a haven for wildlife. Parts of it are also used for coarse fishing. ==History== Whether or not the usefulness of a navigable route from the inland lake of Lough Neagh to Carlingford Lough, on the coast to the south of Lough Neagh was considered before the 1640s is unknown, but during Oliver Cromwell's campaign in Ireland at that time, a survey of the area was made, and Colonel Monk ordered that a navigable trench from Portadown to Newry should be cut. Despite the order, no work was carried out, nor was it when Francis Nevil, a tax collector for the government, made a similar survey and proposal in 1703. Shortly afterwards, the Tyrone coalfield was discovered, and there was pressure to provide a route for the coal to reach Dublin. A bill was put before parliament in 1715, for works to improve drainage and the carriage of goods, but failed to become an Act of Parliament, and there was a gradual realisation that a local area such as this could provide neither the capital nor the expertise for such undertakings. In order to address the situation, the Irish Parliament in 1717 offered a reward of £1,000 to the first person to produce 500 tons of native coal in Dublin and the Commissioners of Inland Navigation for Ireland were set up in 1729, consisting of three high officials from the government, four bishops, and eighty responsible persons, who would oversee all matters concerned with inland waterways. With the hope that a good transport route from the Tyrone coalfields to Dublin could result in the city becoming self-sufficient in coal, rather than having to rely on imports from Great Britain, which were often intermittent, the canal was approved by the Commissioners. Work did not begin immediately, as Thomas Burgh was Surveyor General, and he had interests in the collieries at Ballycastle, which would be affected by Tyrone coal becoming more generally available. Burgh died in 1730, to be succeeded by Edward Lovett Pearce, and work began on the canal in 1731. Although Pearce was officially running the scheme, he was busy constructing the new Parliament House at the time, and gave the task to one of his architectural assistants, Richard Cassels. Cassels had escaped from the religious persecution of the Hugenots in France, and had travelled in Germany, the Low Countries and England, where he had studied navigation works, before arriving in Ireland to work for Pearce. At the time he was known as Richard Castle, but reverted to his original name as his stature as an architect grew. With the death of Pearce in 1733, Cassels became the engineer for the project, which included building the first navigation lock in Ireland. He was discharged in 1736, probably because he was paying more attention to the architectural commmisions he had taken over from Pearce. He was replaced by Thomas Steers, who employed a local man called William Gilbert to oversee the work, which was completed by 1741. Legal disputes delayed the official opening until 1742, and a barge loaded with coal from the Tyrone coalfields reached Dublin on 28 March 1742, although the first part or the journey had involved carriage of the coal overland to Lough Neagh, as the Tyrone Navigation, begun in 1732, was far from complete. The Newry Canal has 14 locks, nine of them to the south of the summit, which is above the level of Carlingford Lough. The locks are long and wide. They were deep and each lock was faced with stone from the Benburb quarries early in the 1800s after the original brick sides began to crumble. Despite the manager, Acheson Johnston, having to report to Parliament in 1750 that there were defective locks, water shortage problems and issues with the width of the summit section, the merchants of Newry were keen to develop the town as a port, and obtained a government grant to build a ship canal to the town. The first contractor, John Golbourne from Chester, was dismissed, and Thomas Omer took over as engineer. The Commissioners of Inland Navigation had invited him to Ireland in 1755, and there is some evidence that he worked on river navigations in England after arriving there from the Holland, but his work was not of a high standard, and created problems for those following him. Omer ignored the previously planned route, and created a ship canal which could accommodate boats of up to 120 tonnes. Newry flourished as a port after its completion in 1769, as did trade on the Newry Canal, although it was largely grain and general merchandise, rather than the coal for which it had been designed. The canal also assisted the development of the Tyrone linen industry and the production of butter for export. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Newry Canal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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